Rough sailing ahead for Buddhadeb Government

By Malabika Bhattacharya

KOLKATA, AUG. 18. On the way to completing 100 days in office, Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's Left Front Government in West Bengal appears to have started getting a taste of the problems on various fronts.

Back in office for a record sixth term, the CPI(M)-led Left Front Government has earned appreciable goodwill all around by virtue of its initiatives in certain key areas of governance, its commitment to fulfilling the election-time pledges and a demonstrative will to deliver.

But causing embarrassment and certain discomfort to the Government are revelations about how a section of party leaders, some of whom are Ministers as well, have degenerated over the years and formed a unholy alliance with the land mafia for material gains disregarding the ideology it was born to.

None drives the point home more than the current holding of meetings in and outside Kolkata by the various units of the CPI(M) in remembrance of the former chairman of the Dum Dum municipality, Sailen Das, also a hugely popular CPI(M) functionary, who was killed last Monday in broad daylight after he stepped out of his home.

The killers who most probably liquidated Sailen Das as part of a contract given to them by a powerful individual or group of individuals, over one or more controversial land deals, are still at large.

But, CPI(M) leaders say in private that they suspect the hand of the land mafia in the incident.

The party's top leaders like Mr. Anil Biswas and Mr. Biman Bose are not offering any comments on the incident as yet, but their position on the incident and beyond will be better made out if their recent pronouncements in another set of recent meetings in remembrance of two die-hard Communist leaders, Niren Ghosh and Sailen Dasgupta, were taken into account.

``A section of our leaders are going astray as they have the tendency to work independent of the party and end up collaborating with vested interests. Our members must rise in protest against them,'' Mr. Biswas and Mr. Bose commented in one such meeting in Kolkata.

Strictly speaking, the CPI(M) even in the times of crass materialism, manages to retain its core values, has a large number of honest leaders and is concerned about degenerative politics.

But adversely, a section of its important functionaries in different district units, forsaking the rigours of ideology, has got into money-making in the company of undesirable elements, daring a hesitant leadership to take action against it.

Reports virtually poured into the party headquarters in Alimuddin Street revealing how a nexus of tainted functionaries-rogue realtors-criminals penetrated the decision- making process in districts like North and South 24-parganas, Burdwan, Hooghly, Howrah, Midnapore and Siliguri over the past several years. Forced by electoral compulsions of various sorts in most parts, the party undertook a limited purification drive which met expulsions of minor functionaries and allowed the controversial prominent leaders to function untouched.

As yet another organisational election gets under way, it is not clear at the moment how far the leadership will go in tackling the nexus which has influenced the functioning of several district units and civic bodies and has been playing a role in the intra-unit strifes.

As housing and infrastructure development goes on at a frenetic pace in Kolkata and elsewhere, party functionaries are inescapably getting sucked into high-valued and often controversial land deals, some of them paying a price with their lives.

However, Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and his party mates such as Mr. Biswas and Mr. Bose appear to have rightly analysed the situation and started talking about addressing a larger and more relevant issue of economic hardship which is resulting in the closure of factories, sweeping job cuts, labour resistance, deceleration of investments and a general sense of frustration.

The economic downturn, coupled with a nascent but disturbing culture of political violence first imported by Ms. Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress in its failed efforts to produce a new political idiom, have given birth to the ills now plaguing Bengal. It remains to be seen how Mr. Bhattacharjee pilots the ship in the days ahead.

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